‘Good’ as an evaluative intensifier

Berit Gehrke (Université Paris-Diderot),
13.06.2017,
16:00

This talk aims to contribute to the ongoing debate on the semantics of evaluative modifiers from the perspective of the interaction between meaning types, and in view of two related Catalan modifiers, namely the ad-nominal bon ‘good’(e.g. una bona estona ‘a good while’) and the ad-adjectival ben ‘well’ (e.g. ben clar ‘well clear’). We build on the lexical semantics of the predicate good and the subsective composition mode to claim that good selects the good instances in the extension of N/A. This yields intensification whenever the extension is ordered. Moreover, a monotonicity inference is conveyed through a Conventional Implicature, which makes evaluative modifiers unacceptable under negation.